TIME AND ETERNITY – A Viewpoint

The thing that characterizes life on earth is time. Indeed, time is associated with this universe, in that we measure it by several motions of the earth with relation to the sun and moon, etc. …. It is difficult for the finite mind to conceive of a state of things before time. ….

Beyond the material universe is eternity. And eternity is not elongated time. Eternity is simply non-time, or what we might call timelessness. All sorts of great things might be happening there which would never take up any of our time. In eternity God has no past, and there is no future. Everything is present tense.

The past history of the world is present; so is also the future—it has already happened. Everything in history and what we would call the future—all is present. That is why He can talk about His beloved Son as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The Lamb did actually die on earth at a definite historical point in time from our point of view. But with God Calvary was already accomplished out of time.

We shall need an illustration at this point here, or we shall get out of our depth and confused with regard to time and eternity. The contrast between a book with a consecutive story line and a reader reading it is an illustration that may help us. As the reader comes to a definite point in the story, that point is present tense to him and he is enjoying it at that moment. But it has a past which he has already read and a future which he is yet to read. Yet he can turn to any other point in the story than the one he is reading and that part immediately becomes present tense to him. The book is in time, but the reader, whom we may represent as God, is in eternity. Any or all of it can, at His will, be present for Him.

During my lifetime I have been locked into time, but at my death (resurrection) I return to God who made me and I pass from time into eternity, and everything is the present to me as it is to Him.

Don’t ask any more questions along that line, for there aren’t any more answers — at least, not from me.

R. Hession